Category: Follies of the Human Condition

Philae: The Power of Positive Thinking?

UPDATE 12 NOV 2014 11:12AM (EST): THEY DID IT!

Philae by Stefan Schindler (All Rights Reserved; Used with Permission)
Philae by Stefan Schindler (All Rights Reserved; Used with Permission)

Tomorrow, the Philae lander detaches from the ESA Rosetta spacecraft and attempts to touch down on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at Site J. A successful landing will be one of the great feats of human scientific exploration.

A webcast of the landing attempt will begin at 2PM (ET) today (ie, now).

Instead of waiting to post pictures, we are going to be optimistic and start with this LEGO build from Stefan Schindler showing the Philae lander resting comfortably on the comet’s surface. More to come…

Astronomy + Poetry from CosmoAcademy

As you know*, we like to mix our science and our poetry. Mike has generously loaned this Philistine the reins to the Sunday Science Poem franchise, which I promptly moved to Tuesday; but I had to move it to Tuesday because I don’t want you to miss out.

CosmoQuest is offering an online course (via Google+ Hangouts) looking at the intersection of astronomy and poetry:

Astronomy has played a role in human culture for thousands of years and appears in literature from every era.  We can see not only the influence of the heavens on our writings, but also the influence of language itself on our conception of astronomy. Heralding the dawn of the International Year of Light in 2015, join us now to explore how light from the stars has been important to humans for millennia.  We will begin with Gilgamesh and Homer, and continue through Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and into contemporary music and literature.  Along the way, we will also examine how the structure of language has influenced the perception of astronomical phenomena. – CosmoQuest Academy

The classes start on Monday, 17 November 2014 at 9PM (ET). Sign-ups (cost $99) are open until Monday, but there are only 8 spots left.

HT: Matthew Francis

*Frankly, I’m tired of coddling you newbies**.

**Have we decided on a sarcasm font***?

***I imagine all those exchanges are constantly derailed by people writing, “I think this one really works” in a proposed font, and then wondering, “Do they really like it or are they being sarcastic****?”

****…which may actually be a sign that it is working.

Apocalypse 1901: Adam and Eve in the Empty World Asylum

M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud (1901)

NorthPoleNOAAThe Book of Revelation isn’t the only part of the Bible that inspires post-apocalyptic fiction — Genesis plays a big part too. The Bible’s story about the beginning of the world has become a popular way to think about the world’s end. Adam and Eve, a paradisiacal Eden, and humanity’s fall get transformed into a last couple, a post-apocalyptic haven, and the forbidden fruit of some unexplored territory or lethal knowledge. What could be called the very first post-apocalyptic novel was explicitly written as a bookend to Genesis. Nathaniel Hawthorne later wrote a replay of Genesis that takes place within the empty remnants of civilization. M.P Shiel’s The Purple Cloud, an overwritten but under-read classic, is also a post-apocalyptic Adam and Eve story: the fall of civilization is brought about by a reach for the unexplored North Pole, and a last couple must consider the moral dilemma of repopulating an empty world.

The Purple Cloud is the first post-apocalyptic novel of the 20th century, but it starts with a throwback, by putting the whole thing within a mystic frame story of the sort employed much earlier by de Grainville and Mary Shelley. Most of the novel consists of the first-person record of the last man as he wrote it down in his notebooks; to get those notebooks in the hands of 20th century readers, Shiel has them dictated by a medium to her physician, who then passes the manuscript on to M.P. Shiel. Finding a plausible explanation for how a future story comes into the hands of present-day readers was a particular concern of 19th century SF writers, but would soon be largely abandoned. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1901: Adam and Eve in the Empty World Asylum”

Science for the People: Understanding Neuroscience

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Blue Pyramidal Neuron - original watercolor painting on clayboard by Michele Banks (All Rights Reserved - Used with Permission)
Blue Pyramidal Neuron – original watercolor painting on clayboard by Michele Banks (All Rights Reserved – Used with Permission)

This week, Science for the People is we’re looking at the ways we try to understand the inner workings of the brain. They talk to University College London researcher Cliodhna O’Connor about patterns in the way the public interprets neuroscience news. And they’ll ask Duncan Astle, Program Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, about “neuromyths,” popular misconceptions about the way the brain functions.

*Josh provides research help to Science for the People and is, therefore, completely biased.

How bad is the NIH budget really?

In the blowback to Francis Collins’ comments about budget cuts delaying an Ebola vaccine, there is a lot of confusion going around about just how much the NIH budget declined.

The worst offender is the usually very good Sarah Kliff at Vox.com, who writes:

The NIH’s budget rose rapidly during the early 2000s, growing from $17 billion in 2000 to a peak of $31 billion in 2010. This meant more money for everything…

Funding then began to decline in 2010 and has continued to fall slightly over the past four years (this was during a period when Obama was in the White House, Democrats controlled the Senate, and Republicans controlled the House). By 2013, funding was down to $29.3 billion. These figures do not account for inflation.

Inflation – there’s the rub. Because when you do account for inflation, you see that the NIH budget was in decline long before 2010 – in fact things started to go south after 2004, as the AAAS budget analysis shows:

And depending on how you make the inflation adjustment, things can look even worse – you hear claims of a 20% decline tossed around. To understand how this works, lets look at the numbers themselves: Continue reading “How bad is the NIH budget really?”